June 30, 2015 - Pope Francis Denounces GMOs and Pesticides

Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - Pope Francis has stated that genetically modified organisms and the pesticides used to grow them are both environmentally and socially ‘significant’ problems.

Here are three significant quotes:

“The most fragile among them become temporary workers and many farm workers migrate to end up in miserable urban settlements. The spread of these (GM) crops destroys the complex web of ecosystems, decreases diversity in production and affects the present and the future of regional economies. In several countries there is a trend in the development of oligopolies in the production of seeds and other products needed for cultivation, and the dependence deepens when you consider the production of sterile seeds, which end up forcing farmers to buy (seeds) from producers.”

“We get sick, for example, due to inhalation of large amounts of smoke produced by fuels used for cooking and heating. This is added to by….fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and toxic pesticides in general. Technology that is linked to finance, claims to be only solving problems…this solves a problem by creating others."

“It creates a vicious circle in which the intervention of the human being to solve a problem often worsens the situation further.”